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Re: [Sip] Is REFER within dialog part of INVITE or subscription usage? (was RE: SIP INFO)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Kyzivat [mailto:pkyzivat at cisco.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 7:43 AM
> To: Doken, Serhad
> Cc: Dale Worley; SIP IETF; Brett Tate
> Subject: Re: [Sip] Is REFER within dialog part of INVITE or
> subscription usage? (was RE: SIP INFO)
> 
> 
> 
> Doken, Serhad wrote:
> 
> >> I guess the question is: would it be valid to send a REFER within an
> >> existing dialog that had no INVITE usage? If it were valid,
> presumably
> >
> > Yes, I think so.
> >
> >
> >> it would have the same meaning as sending one outside a dialog,
> except
> >> that the resulting subscription would share the dialog. I expect
> that
> >> is
> >> a usage it would be difficult to find in the wild.
> >
> > Consider a third party control application that forces an endpoint to
> register :
> >
> > REFER sip:phone.doken.com SIP/2.0
> > Refer-To: <sip:serhad at doken.com;method=REGISTER>
> >
> > that triggers a REG to the registrar as :
> >
> > REGISTER sip:serhad at doken.com SIP/2.0
> 
> You are suggesting that first this 3pcc application sends a SUBSCRIBE
> to
> this UA, establishing a dialog. Then it sends a REFER within the
> dialog,
> asking the UA REGISTER? That then would presumably result in a
> subscription to the refer event package sharing the dialog with the
> prior subscription. I guess this is *possible*, though I don't know
> *why* it would be done. What would the initial SUBSCRIBE be to, and how
> would it be established before the UA has registered?

3rd party contact center desktop monitoring application is used by the supervisor to see agent's activities. Thru a CTI <->SIP translator, it SUBs to the agent's presence. Once the customer service agent comes in the morning and turns his phone's status to Online(Open), app notices this and forces it to Register. At the end of the day when agent leaves, does the opposite and de-registers it. Thus, it is made sure that they only get billed for the time that agent was registered(online) by the service provider.

> 
> Are you aware of such usage in the wild?

I have seen somewhat similar examples. If you are offering enough stimulus/TARP money, wild frontiers will get closer.

It's mostly used for Xfer however as you alluded to, REFER is implicit or ambiguous that it is open to be used as the Swiss knife if I wanted the other side to do something for me. As long as the sender and receiver know/understand what is meant or the context(especially if they are from the same vendor), everything is fine, if not misinterpretations may happen.

> 
> (Its incidental to this discussion, but REGISTER presents unique
> challenges because of the way addressing works for it. Contrary to your
> example above, we would typically expect that the To: would contain the
> full URI, while the R-URI would only be sip:doken.com. This would

You are right.

Thanks,
Serhad

> require more special case processing.)
> 
> 	Thanks,
> 	Paul